In Book I of Plato's Republic, Socrates discusses the exact topics that we have been conversating about; mainly the beginning of human nature (or society). What is so important about societies is that they are directly linked to how we may view a persons morality. As we have stated, morality is judged relatively. If we are raised in a household that steals, we may view stealing as something legitimate. The one argument that I wish to raise comes from the story Protagoras gives involving Thinxahead and Thinxtoolate; attempting to define human nature. Protagoras states, "Now, supplied with these advantages, in earliest times people lived scattered here and there. There were no societies... So they kept on trying to find a way to gather into groups and defend themselves by founding communities, but every time they came together, they would do one another wrong, since they didn't have any ethical know-how, and so they would scatter again and go back to being slaughtered." (322b.) I would like to compare this to how Socrates believed societies were formed in the Republic. Socrates argued that people needed each other for survival (as did Protagoras). The main factor, though, consists in the dependency upon the citizens of the society, for Socrates, since the people needed each other to survive. Interdepenency was vital for a different reason though: for the society to exist; home builders were needed to build homes, doctors were needed to cure the sick, farmers to provide food, etc... This dependency upon one another left no room to fight.
Socrates original association is not violent or desperate. What Socrates accentuates is that our needs binds us together by nature. That something common and mutual is at the root of the state; that there is a kind of justice operative in this small city. From this, people will, or at least, should settle into the tasks that they can master and do well.
As we have seen, Protagoras insisted that individuals do not have this mutual beginning. They have individual and independent motivations for coming into society; possibly different impulses or desires would be the original condition of his society.
If I may branch off, I would like to single out the society of Protagoras. If anyone has ever read the Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, I'm sure they can see similarities. Hobbes stated that we begin in a "State of Nature" were life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." In this State of Nature everything belonged to everyone. From this, he states that "If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies." Followed by, "To this war of every man against every man, this also is consequent: that nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place." (Hobbes, Of the Natural Condition of Mankind). If we begin in a state of war, how could morality every be derived from it? Coming from this, why is Protagoras attempting to push his ethical knowledge into the arena of teaching how to be good?
Now that I have showed the similarities between Socrates and Protagoras' socities, I wish to question: If Protagoras is actually attempting to find and teach the "true good", why is he starting his society off with violence, just as Hobbes? Why does having no "ethical know-how" automatically mean that people are violent beings? Isn't the main struggle surviving? Who seems to be chasing the "real just" and "real good" without giving a preconceived notion that immorality is expected in human nature?
